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Afro

Brand new album from extraordinary duet Amadou & Mariam called La Confusion.

Greatly produced by French producer Adrien Durand, first album with freshly pressed new tracks in Five years 🙂 A bit more electro than before, but the essence is still there. Looking forward to see them live again !

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The second track to be taken from Zara McFarlane’s showstopping third album Arise, “Pride” is a tightly tuned, rhythmic waltz, matching killer jazz chops with pitch-perfect, standout vocals. Building up to a blowout crescendo, it sees Moses Boyd on drums sparring with Binker Golding’s tenor sax. This new record sees Zara’s most open-armed embrace of her British-Jamaican heritage, with this track – including a turn on the bass clarinet from Shabaka Hutchings – being part of a broader exploration into the connections between jazz and reggae.

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Born and raised in the Angolan ghetto of Cazenga, the now Portuguese-based instrumentalist’s new record is a melting pot of musical styles and cultures.

“I come from tribal music” says Diron. “I had a traditional music group, then I moved to a Capoeira group where I was a main corrido and I played batuque. Around that time I also started introducing Hip Hop and Kuduro styles. Then I mixed Kuduro with Hip Hop and Kuduro with Rock. Now I am making music for all people and all ages.”

With a foot firmly set in his ghetto roots, the album is a personal exploration:“Cazenga is a place where a lot of the Angolan dances were invented, where children roam around barefoot and have no food but can transform their struggles into creativity”, says Diron.

This movement and struggle is at the core of the new record. Traditional African styles blended with Portugal’s frenetic electronic music style, culminate in a vibrant, energetic and rhythmic record that deals in both adversity and positivity.

Listen to the first track, Alone. The LP will be available in october 4th 🙂

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On ‘All Africa’, Zara McFarlane re-casts a landmark track by Max Roach. Taken from We Insist!, his 1960 album born of the US’ then-ascendant Civil Rights Movement, it saw avant-garde jazz used as vehicle for protest. With Roach and vocalist Abbey Lincoln at its core, it nodded to the growing independence movements then emerging in several African nations. The original track’s celebration of the present, past and future of Africa feels as relevant now as it did in 1960.

Taking the original’s all-out, percussive trip into a looser, more softly mesmerising kind of territory, this new version combines pulsing rhythm with a brighter musicality. The Alternate Take, meanwhile, follows a more groove-oriented direction. Punctuated by bursts of horns and a foot-tapping, syncopated rhythm, it hints at a globally-interconnected spirit.